I’ve long been fascinated by the mystery of the murder of Seth Rich on July 10, 2016, and on the anniversary of his death, it’s time to update what we’ve learned about it. As to George Clooney and his decision to withdraw his support for the reelection of President Biden, there’s much more to the story, in my view.

Seth Rich 

Two years ago, I summarized what we knew of Rich’s mysterious murder. 

Seth Rich was a DNC staffer who was mysteriously murdered on July 10, 2016, in Washington, D.C. after having been shot twice in the back. None of the valuable items in his possession seem to have been stolen. That would seem to rule out robbery. He had no known enemies and the murder occurred early in the morning (4:20 a.m.) in a safe neighborhood of the city. No one was ever arrested or prosecuted for the crime. There were no known witnesses to the murder. Nor to my knowledge were any suspects ever named. Local law enforcement nevertheless suggested his murder was part of a botched robbery. Six days after the murder, Wikileaks published over 19,000 emails and 8,000 attachments from the DNC files. In November of that year, they published over 8,000 more emails from the files. The emails showed that party officials favored Clinton over rival Bernie Sanders.

Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, long embroiled in a lengthy effort to avoid extradition to the U.S. from the U.K., has refused steadfastly to name the source of this material but has hinted on Dutch television that it was Seth Rich. He has repeatedly said the Russian government was not the source.

Persons familiar with such things have examined the rate of data transmission, inter alia, and concluded the DNC system was not hacked by outsiders. Instead, they contend that the files were copied to a storage device like a thumb drive and transmitted to Assange’s Wikileaks.

Rich was a Bernie Sanders supporter, and the DNC files showed how it was fixing the primaries for Hillary Clinton.

I noted then that the FBI originally indicated it did not have the information from Rich’s computer. Robert Mueller indicted some Russians, claiming they were the hackers; one of the defendants showed up to defend, and DoJ dropped that suit (having obviously thought no one would contest that ruse). Later, the FBI belatedly admitted it did have the information on the computer. A suit was filed for the information on the computer in the FBI’s possession, and it stalled on producing it.

The FBI is still stalling on producing what it has despite repeated court orders. Most recently, it admits that it has both of Rich’s personal and work computers, a forensic report of one of the computers and a tape drive of it, which should evince whether or not Rich himself downloaded the DNC files. Plaintiff’s counsel, Ty Clevenger, reports to me, “They withheld the forensic report and tape drive and never told of their existence for years.” Ordered to produce information from one of the computers in November of last year, the DoJ has again delayed production by filing a motion for reconsideration. (A motion was filed to substitute Yehuda Miller for Brian Huddleston, who no longer wanted the spotlight, so future filings and court orders will be in his name, not Huddleston’s.)

Assange has now finally been released from threat of prosecution for espionage on unrelated matters involving government files on the Iraq and Afghanistan war, which had been stolen by Chelsea Manning, whom President Obama pardoned years ago.

In the absence of evidence of a hack, and in light of both the speed of the download and the FBI’s stalling of production of information in its possession, it’s certainly fair to infer the “hack” was not a hack but an inside job and the murder of Rich may well have been related to that. More mysterious is the government’s refusal to end speculation by releasing the evidence in its own hands.

George Clooney’s Bait and Switch 

On the internet, George Clooney has become a subject of fun for an op-ed in the NYT, withdrawing his support for Biden just days after hosting a multimillion-dollar Hollywood fundraiser for the president. The satire site Babylon Bee reports, “In new Oceans 14 George Clooney pulls off 30 million heist by tricking people into giving money to politician before revealing he’s demented.” Other Hollywood personages who played a role in the fundraiser, like Rob Reiner and Jane Fonda, have also withdrawn their endorsement of Biden following the op-ed.

Michael Ramirez: A President In Trouble 07-10-24

It’s true, of course, that Biden is seriously medically compromised, and it’s also true that at the fundraiser, he demonstrated that. Barack Obama overtly highlighted that fact when he led Biden off the stage as if the president were a befuddled toddler. So the president’s infirmities were obvious weeks before his disastrous debate performance that Clooney said prompted his op-ed. 

Donald Trump weighed in at Donald Trump Truth Social 10:09 PM EST 07/10/24:

George Clooney, who never came close to making a great movie, is getting into the act. He’s turned on Crooked Joe like the rats they both are. What does Clooney know about anything? He uses the Democrat “talking point” that Biden, the WORST President in the history of the United States, has “saved our Democracy.” No, Crooked Joe was the one who WEAPONIZED Law Enforcement against his political Opponent, who created the most devastating INFLATION in the history of our Country, who Embarrassed our Nation in Afghanistan, and whose crazy Open Border Policy has allowed millions of people to illegally pour into our Country, many from prisons and mental institutions. Crooked Joe Biden didn’t save our Democracy, he brought our Democracy to its knees. Clooney should get out of politics and go back to television. Movies never really worked for him!!! 

I have to register some disagreement with Trump on this. In Hail, Caesar! he played a dumb actor kidnapped by Marxist screenwriters and brainwashed by them and was terrific. Maybe it was typecasting.

In my view, the Obamas and Clooney and his wife, Amal, are close friends and, together, they may well have orchestrated a bait and switch. On May 24 Michelle Obama and Amal were photographed dining together at Ilili, a popular D.C. Lebanese restaurant, and departed arm in arm. It’s no secret that Obama wants to replace Biden at the top of the ticket. Nor is it any secret that Amal wanted the president to endorse the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants against Israeli leaders. In my opinion, Clooney used the fundraiser as bait to get Biden to change his position on the ICC and used the debate performance as an excuse to sign on to Obama’s backstabbing of Biden. At about the same time that Amal and Michelle were having a warm tete-a-tete in DC, Clooney called White House aide Steve Ricchetti, expressing concern about Biden’s denunciation of the ICC arrest warrants against Israeli leaders.

Amal Clooney, an international human rights lawyer, served as one of six experts on an ICC panel reviewing evidence that led chief prosecutor Karim Khan to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, among others on May 20.

The warrants alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during the ongoing conflict in Gaza. Biden immediately issued a statement, calling the arrest warrants against Israeli leaders "outrageous."[snip]

In a statement on Clooney Center for Justice, the couple's charity, Amal wrote last month, "I served on this Panel because I believe in the rule of law and the need to protect civilian lives," adding that "I will never accept that one child's life has less value than another's. I do not accept that any conflict should be beyond the reach of the law, nor that any perpetrator should be above the law."

It’s been widely and credibly reported that Obama saw the op-ed before it was sent in to the New York Times.